


chiaroscuro

by latinacap



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Death, Domestic Thriller, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Inspired by Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, M/M, Married Life, Mystery, Not Tony Stark Friendly, POV Multiple, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Psychological Drama, Secrets, Unreliable Narrator, art history references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 12:36:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18992800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/latinacap/pseuds/latinacap
Summary: On July 7th, Steven Grant Stark goes missing.Marriage sure can be a realkiller.





	chiaroscuro

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and welcome to my crackhead fic! Gillian Flynn is my favorite author and although my favorite novel of hers is Sharp Objects, Gone Girl has a certain psychological edge to it that I absolutely LOVE. I'm going to include some notes at the end that are important but contain some spoilers for the fic and book/movie too. 
> 
> I want to put a warning, however, because this is NOT a Tony Stark friendly fic. Please close this fic if you stan him really hard. 
> 
> Enjoy!

###  TONY STARK – DAY OF 

 

The first thing Tony noticed about his husband was his head. 

The shape of it, to be more specific. He felt compelled to cup the fine blonde locks against the curve of his skull, threading his fingers deep enough to feel the warm, milky skin beneath it. It was that exact head that caught his attention seven years ago in the crowded gallery that featured a new up-and-coming artist. The back of that head was all Tony saw before the smaller man finally turned, flashed him a smile, and said, “Hi. I’m Steven Rogers,”

Looking back on it now, Tony noticed a pattern of behavior that always played out whenever he and his husband were within reaching distance; he was obsessed with petting Steve’s hair. After sex or even just to lay about their unnecessarily large bed, they fit together with Steve’s head on Tony’s stomach, the billionaire’s hand smoothing down the unruly cowlick that was ever so persistent on his beloved’s head despite the money he spent on hair products. Steve would always doze off silently. A couple times, he’d startle awake the moment Tony’s fingers reached the root of those fine hairs and watch the other man with a look that begged for protection against the world beyond their little cocoon of safety. During those moments, Tony wondered what it was exactly that was running through his fair husband’s head. _What are you thinking, Stevie?_ Dinner plans? A new art piece? Spousal adoration? You’d think after seven years together – two of dating, five married, if it mattered – Tony would be able to read the other man like a book, freely and easily without much thought further into what was presented. Alas, the older man could only guess as to what ran through that pretty, little, perfect head of Steven’s.

His own thoughts ran ramped with all the questions he’s built up over the years, wishing he could ask them whenever they laid like this. _What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?_

It didn’t help that although those doe-like eyes stared up at him lovingly, Tony thought of crushing that skull between his hands.

He wanted nothing more than to feel the curve of head to cave in itself, watch the light out of those blue eyes flicker out as he dug his fingers into what was left and squeeze his brain like Play-Doh. Tony found himself fantasizing it more and more, every second of every hour that he had to share a home with Steve. The Brooklyn artist, the loving househusband, the sickly sweetheart Stark – the man whose skull felt ripe for destruction.

Tony may not know what is in his husband’s head, but he knows that despite the smiles and ramblings of curtain patterns, Steve loathed the home they shared. Since day one of moving into the Malibu home, the blonde would look him straight in the eye and joke, “Should I remove my soul before I come inside?”. It was a compromise. Howard Stark was on his last legs, fighting a losing battle with liver cancer from severe alcoholism that reared its ugly head  throughout Tony’s childhood, and Maria Stark had already passed on from a car accident a decade prior. When Tony shared the news that they were leaving the filth and despair of Brooklyn for the populated and elite shores of Malibu, Steve immediately demanded they rented, not buy. It was his sliver of hope that they would stay for only a short while and would be moving back to New York within the year. One month turned to six, twelve, then eighteen months. Tony never understood why his husband hated the Californian town so much, sneering every time they pulled up to the lavish mansion.

Sometimes, instead of bashing his skull in, Tony imagined himself shaking the blonde and telling him, “ _Don’t blame me for this, Stevie. Blame Howard, blame bad luck, blame art critiques, blame your profession.”_  Tony was smart, invested into new ideas and radical solutions to build a company out of the dog-shit that Howard turned it into. Out of the ashes of the small tech corporation, Tony rose like a phoenix and created the empire of Stark Industries with the weapons he designed for the American government. He was one of the top billionaires in the entire world, crushing anything that tried to shine in the shadow that Stark Industries casted over them. He was on the cover of _Forbes,_ for fuckssake. The richest bachelor in America. His pockets overflowed with money, hundreds upon thousands upon billions that he didn’t hesitate to spend on anything and everything. Cars, houses, trips, alcohol – and art. Tony never asked for anything from anyone, and he became who he was because of his dedication and ambition. _That’s_ Tony Stark.

He wished the public knew that – remembered the donated grants and the contributions to their family – before deciding he was a spouse-killer. 

* * *

 

July 7th. The date always crept up on Tony. He was constantly surrounded by the portraits of Steve and himself smiling at the camera, dressed in suits while holding champagne flutes and looking at each other as if they were the only people that existed in the universe – it seemed like Tony should be able to remember. They were constant reminders to himself and others that _yeah, we’re happy! Look at our smiles!_

He woke to the sun coming through the small sliver of the blackout curtains. Jarvis knew not to open the steel-gray drapes until at least seven, so it must’ve been Steve who opened the curtains to wake him up. His husband could be obnoxious that way. Always doing things to prove that he was more responsible. Still, Tony had to admit, it worked.

The brunette yawned into his hand, scratching his beard as he took in the empty side of their bed. The pillows and covers were put together as if no one slept on the side at all, precise and clean without a hint of life. The nightstand still had Steve’s empty glass, a few drops of water illuminated by the sun. Besides the glass, there wasn’t much evidence that Steve had come to bed last night – strange but not unusual.

Both of them have had their fair share of long nights, chasing their vision down to commit it into the real world. They may have their vast differences, yet those late nights of sitting on countertops and discussing their own interests with each other was one of the things they both cherished. The thought of their spouse actually giving a shit about their interest was the biggest turn on in the entire world. Opposites attract, they say. Tony hated that saying. Steve was a young liberal arts major when they met, working on his degree in Art History with a minor in museum management and always had paint smudged on his clothing whenever they went on dates. Tony, himself, had already started rebuilding the mess that Stark Industries was at the time with his own mechanical engineering PhD under his belt.

One was practical and useful in their everyday life, while the other was useless and irrational.

“Friday?” Tony called into his room, rubbing eyes of the the traces of sleep still clinging onto him. The beeping of his intelligent personal assistant chimed loudly from the dresser in front of him, Friday’s voice coming through the speaker with a cheerfulness that only an AI could have at this hour.

“Good morning, boss,” she said, the bright blue light twinkling with every syllable, “The date is July 7th, 2019, and the weather will reach a high of 80 degrees. Stark Industries is down–,”

“I know, I know,” the brunette pulled the covers away from his legs, moving to grab his cell phone from the nightstand. “Where’s Steve?”

“Mr. Stark is currently in the kitchen cooking breakfast. Shall I inform him that you’re awake?”

Tony waved a hand towards the small bot, scratching his beard as he scrolled through the notifications that had accumulated during the night. A good number of them were from his friends, congratulating him on five happy years of marriage with emojis of two men kissing or two flutes of champagne clinking. Most of the rest were from social media – the face of his smiling husband standing in front of a darling painting of two children running in private school uniforms looking back at him, the comment of some faceless follower swooning over Steve’s painting. “No, I’ll just surprise him,” a pause, “But go ahead and ask Jarvis to make reservations for us tonight at _Mastro’s_ ,”

Friday beeped in confirmation, sitting for a moment before beeping once more as she shut down. Although not as good as a human, he has to admit that Friday really has been one of his most successful of inventions, despite what his husband said. Comparing Friday to Alexa or Siri was like comparing Gucci to Walmart. Friday was the better of the other two, a pinnacle of the future that he put into the world. Of course, whenever he brought that up to Steve, his dear husband’s eyes would gloss over to the point where he was anywhere but next to his spouse.

Gathering himself together enough to get out of bed, Tony walked toward the mirror over the dresser to inspect himself after last night. Truth be told, there’s lots of times that Tony has drank himself into a blackout, waking up in the bed or couch of someone he declared the night before to be his new business partner – back in the days of being a bachelor that came to an abrupt end when he met Steve – yet today felt off. He woke up in his bed, naked save for his boxer briefs and completely covered with violet bruises that littered his torso and face. Turning around only showed the discovery of four long scratches down one of his shoulder blades and the ominous looking red smear near his hip. Tony imagined what might have caused that smear, picturing his husband’s crimson paint stained hands moving down to touch him in the dead of night as a last resort to restore their dead sex life.

His glorious husband had a very odd fascination with Caravaggista art. He would never admit it, but Steve always found a was to sneak in a dash of bright red into his art and paintings that paralleled that of the great _peintre maudit._ The ugly violence of a decapitation, the sexual aura of young men … if you asked Tony, Caravaggio was the most despicable of artists and he’ll be damned if he ever let his husband paint anything close to what that man created. His Steven, the _art major._

What a fucking joke.

The curtains shifted, opening up with a whine to unleash the sunshine into the bedroom. He was greeted by the ocean, shimmering in the sunlight while a flock of seagulls fly overhead, and he felt like he could finally breathe for the first time in ages. The openness of the ocean somehow felt comforting – a force of nature that was completely out of his control and that it was okay. He didn’t need to control the ocean, he already had control of everything else in his life. The ocean can remain unconquered.

By the time Tony made it downstairs, he realized that he didn’t want to face the disappointment of his husband standing in front of kitchen island. He can see Steve standing there, flipping a crepe with his eyes trained on Tony as if waiting for him to do anything just so the blonde could nag him about something. Their cat, Goose, sitting on the counter with its tail flicking to and fro, staring the billionaire down with the same gaze his owner had. His stomach turned at the thought of seeing his husband. There was a time he would’ve raced down the steps to take the young man into his arms, lay him onto the closest flat surface, and suck him off until Steve saw white. Now all he wanted to do when he saw Steve was to be out of his sight as soon as possible.

Maybe that turning in his stomach – like maggots writhing and squirming inside his guts – was why he felt the need to get out of his house as quick as possible before the walls started caving in. Looking back on it all now, he probably should’ve been braver when it came to communicating with Steve. More brazen. Strong enough so he didn’t have to endure the belittling tone that Steve always took on in front of him. Alas, he was weak.

The sun in Malibu was hot, though, which made it perfect for a drive down the PCH.

 

* * *

###  STEVE ROGERS 

January 5th, 2012

_– Journal entry –_

 

I’m so crazy, stupid _happy_. 

I met a boy. A great, gorgeous, sweet, cool-ass guy.

This is the truth! Let me set the scene because it deserves a setting for posterity.

Cold night, Brooklyn. The party is in fully swing. Bruce sticks me alone with two beers in hand, guy code broken clean in two. Who knew my monk-brewed wheat beer would catch the eye of Mr. Tall, dark, and handsome.

Now, I like a good art party. I like artists. I am the child of artists. I am an artist. I still love scribbling that word, ARTIST – any time, any form, questionnaire, document, asks for my occupation. Fine, so I don’t paint the great issues of the day like Banksy, but I still paint good enough to have rich snobs sniff around my work. They call it “Thought provoking” which just means that they don’t truly understand it. I’m okay with that. My art is mine, not anyone else's. That’s why I’ve decided to start this journal, to help me catalog my emotions and make my art better. When I someday want to commit this day in art, I need this to remind me of how I felt when I attended this party.

Anyway, the party is being thrown by one of Bruce’s good friends who writes books about art history, and is very funny, according to Bruce. I worry for a second that he wants to set us up: I am not interested in being set up. I need to be ambushed, caught unawares, like some sort of feral love-jackal. I’m too self-conscious otherwise. I feel myself trying to be charming, and then I try to be even more charming to make up for the fake charm, and then I’ve basically turned into Liza Minnelli: I’m dancing in tights and sequins, begging you to love me. There’s a bowler and jazz hands and lots of teeth.

But no, I realize, as Bruce gushes on about his friend: _He_ likes her. Good.

We climb three flights of warped stairs and walk into a whoosh of body heat and artisticness: many black-framed glasses and mops of hair; faux fur and paint splattered pants; blazers flopped all across the couch, puddling to the floor; a German poster for The Getaway ( _Ihre Chance war gleich Null!_ ) covering one paint-cracked wall. Franz Ferdinand on the stereo: ‘Take Me Out.’

A clump of guys hovers near a card table where all the alcohol is set up, tipping more booze into their cups after every few sips, all too aware of how little is left to go around. I nudge in, aiming my plastic cup in the center like a busker, get a clatter of ice cubes and a splash of vodka from a sweet-faced guy wearing a Vincent Van Gogh T-shirt.

A lethal-looking bottle of green-apple liqueur, the host’s ironic purchase, will soon be our fate unless someone makes a booze run, and that seems unlikely, as everyone clearly believes they made the run last time. It is a January party, definitely, everyone still gutted and sugar-pissed from the holidays, lazy and irritated simultaneously. A party where people drink too much and pick cleverly worded fights, blowing cigarette smoke out an open window even after the host asks them to go outside. We’ve already talked to one another at a thousand holiday parties, we have nothing left to say, we are collectively bored, but we don’t want to go back into the January cold; our bones still ache from the subway steps.

I have lost Bruce to his host-beau – they are having an intense discussion in a corner of the kitchen, the two of them hunching their shoulders, their faces toward each other, the shape of a heart. Good. I think about eating to give myself something to do besides standing in the center of the room, smiling like the new kid in the lunchroom. But almost everything is gone. Some potato-chip sharps sit in the bottom of a Giant Tupperware bowl. A supermarket deli tray full of hoary carrots and gnarled celery and a semeny dip sits untouched on a coffee table, cigarettes littered throughout like bonus vegetable sticks. I am doing my thing, my impulse thing: What if I leap from the theatre balcony right now? What if I tongue the homeless man across from me on the subway? What if I sit down on the floor of this party by myself and eat everything on that deli tray, including the cigarettes?

“Please don’t eat anything in that area,” he says. It is _him_ (bum bum _BUMMM_!), but I don’t yet know it’s _him_ (bum-bum-bummm). I know it’s a guy who will talk to me, he wears his cockiness like an ironic T-shirt, but it fits him better. He is the kind of guy who carries himself like he gets laid a lot, a guy who likes women _and_ men, a guy who would actually fuck me properly. I would like to be fucked properly! The only other men I’ve been with have all been pity-fucks rather than genuine attraction. I can count the number of men who actually have liked me on one hand … one finger, exactly.

“Seriously,” Number 2 continues. (Ha!) “Back away from the tray. Rhodney has up to three other food items in his refrigerator. I could make you an olive with mustard. Just one olive, though.”

 _Just one olive, though._ It is a line that is only a little funny, but it already has the feel of an inside joke, one that will get funner with nostalgia repetition. I think: _A year from now, we will be walking along the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset and one of us will whisper, “Just one olive, though,” and we’ll start to laugh._ (Then I catch myself. Awful. If he knew I was doing _a year from now_ already, he’s _run_ and I’d be obliged to cheer him on.)

Mainly, I will admit, I smile (Despite the fact that I’m actually _allergic_ to olives) because he’s gorgeous. Distractingly gorgeous, the kind of looks that make your eyes pinwheel, that make you want to just address the elephant – “You know you’re gorgeous, right?” – and move on with the conversation. I bet dudes hate him: He looks like the rich villain in an ‘80s comic – the one who bullies the sensitive misfit, the one who gets ridiculously defeated by the hero as the whole city cheers.

He doesn’t act that way, though. His name is Tony. I love it. It makes him seem cool, and regular, which he is. When he tells me his name, I say, “Now, that’s a real name.” He brightens and reels off some line: “Tony’s the kind of guy you can drink wine with, the kind of guy who doesn’t mind if you sleep a hangover off in his Lamborghini. Tony!”

He makes a series of awful jokes. I catch three fourths of his movie references. Two thirds, maybe. (Note to self: Rent _The Sure Thing_ ) He refills my drink without me having to ask, somehow ferreting out one last cup of the good stuff. He has claimed me, placed a flag in me: _I was here first, he’s mine, mine._ It feels nice, after my recent series of closeted men looking to fuck something as close to a woman as possible, to be a territory. He has a great smile, a cat’s smile. He should cough out yellow Tweety Bird feathers, the way he smiles at me. He doesn’t ask what I do for a living, which is fine, which is a change. (I’m an artist, did I mention?) He talks to me in his educated California accent; he was born in Long Island and raised in Beverly Hills, the land of the wealthy and powerful, the inspirations for American royalty. He tells me his first car was a Mercedes, but it’s not show-boaty. And when I laugh (bratty, bratty New York guy who has never ventured to those big unwieldy states, those States Where Many Other People Live), he informs me that _SoCal_ is a magical place, the most beautiful in the world, no state more glorious. His eyes are mischievous, his lashes are long. I can see what he looked like when he was my age. Did I mention he was older? Significantly, possibly tethering that line between mature older and daddy-issues older. I never considered dating someone older than me, but it’ll be nice to show him a new thing or two.

We share a taxi home, the streetlights making dizzy shadows and the car speeding as if we’re being chased, it is one a.m. when we hit one of New York’s unexplained deadlocks twelve blocks from my apartment, so we slide out of the taxi into the cold, into the great What Next?  And Tony starts walking me home, his hand on the small of my back, our faces stunned by the chill. As we turn the corner, the local bakery is getting its powdered sugar delivered, funneled into the cellar by the barrelful as if it were cement, and we can see nothing but the shadows of the delivery men in the white, sweet cloud. The street is bellowing, and Tony pulls me close and smiles that smile again, and he takes a single lock of my hair between two fingers and pushed them out of my face, twisting twice, like he’s ringing a bell. His eyelashes are trimmed with powder, and before he leans in, he brushes the sugar from my lips so he can taste me.

* * *

 Tony swung open the door of The Bar, stepped in, and breathed in the first breath of air since leaving the Tower. The smell of cigarettes and beer, the spice of the bourbons, the tang of stale beer nuts. There was only one customer at the bar, sitting by herself at the far, far, far end of the bar: an older woman named Angie who came in on Thursdays with a different romance novel in hand every time. He doesn’t know why she chose to spend her time here, but she only has a glass of Chardonnay during her stay at the bar and smiles awkwardly at them when they greet her.

His old secretary was at work behind the bar, her hair pulled up into a messy bun that threatened to spill out of the scrunchy as she scrubbed the dirty mugs in near-scolding water. Nat is slender and angular, attractive in the conventional way. Her features can belong to a model on the runway; sharp chin, high cheekbones, plump dusty lips, small frame. If she were in a period piece, the men would trip over themselves to paint her in an elegant headscarf and extravagant earrings that would punctuate her wealth. He could see her as the proper Dutch woman, the pinnacle of beauty and refinement. The only downside to her fair complexion was that her eyebrows were too fine to be noticed without makeup – not that the fiery shade of red of her locks helped distract from that minute flaw.

“Do they still make cinnamon raisin loads?” she said, foregoing an actual greeting the moment he stepped in. Maybe he put on too much cologne? Still, the familiarity between them was a relief: Things might not be great, but things would be okay.

His best friend, Nat. He’s taken to saying that so much that every time he see her, her name might as well be Besfriendnat. They met back when Nat was his secretary during the era when he got to command the company how he wanted without his husband breathing down his neck. In fact, Nat has been one of the few people that still remember what he was like before he got married to Steve. Nat was truly the only person that Tony could truly be himself with. He didn’t clarify, didn’t doubt, didn’t worry. Their bond hasn’t been the same for a while – he doesn’t tell her everything, not anymore, but he tells her more than anyone else, by far. He tried to tell her as much as he could. They’ve spent years together back to back, covering each other. It was second nature now. It never mattered to him that she was an employee of his. What could he say? She was just cool.

“Cinnamon raisin, who even buys that anymore?” Natasha, clearly. “I think they do,”

“We should get some,” she said. She didn’t look up from her work. “I’m intrigued,”

Without asking, she poured him an amber colored scotch into a short yellow-hued glass. When Nat caught him inspecting the rim for lingering lip marks or fragile cracks, she snatched the glass away from him and licked a smudge away, not even bothering to dry off the saliva she left behind. She set the glass back down in front of him, arms spread apart, her head tilted in annoyance. “Better, your Majesty?”

“Yes, my squalid little serf,” he said, and fluttered his hands royally. 

His stomach rolled at the silence that followed, the thought of that morning making him almost nauseous as he took a swing of his drink. It went down smooth, but it still lodged in his throat and made him even thirstier. 

“What’s up with you?” she asked, “You look all twitchy,”. She flicked some suds at him, more water than soap in the mixture. The air conditioning flicked on over them, and they both sighed in relief at the feel of the cool air on the back of their necks in the middle of summer. The Bar wasn’t exactly the most upscale place to be at, a blemish in the middle of the luxurious dining establishments in Malibu. A stark contrast from the white tablecloths, soft spoken patrons, and the small proportions that only acted to serve as an excuse for being in a bar. _Of course I’m not here to just drink wine and ignore my date, I’m here for the great food!_ It was seedy with a wooden countertop, water rings that are probably older than he was permanently etched into the dark wood, and uncomfortable dark green vinyl stools that have long since ripped to reveal the foam spilling out. If his mother was still alive, she’d stir clear of the bar with a handkerchief over her nose to block the smell. His father hated the place, has spent the last few years of his life trying to get Tony to sell the damn place, but it felt like something he still needed. A coke trip from his early twenties and a harty trust-fund later, The Bar was officially owned by one Anthony Edward Stark.

Nat refilled his drink, refilled her Draft beer. Her scarlet lipstick didn’t even come off her rim, and she swished the liquid in her mouth a little before swallowing it with a sour face. Her eyes got watery. It was exactly noon, twelve o’clock, and Tony wondered how long she’s been drinking. She was the first assistants he ever had (If you don’t count the ones his father hired for him) and ever since leaving Stark Industries, she’s found it pretty hard to hold a job that pays enough for the expensive California lifestyle. He’s tried helping her out here and there, but her Russian pride made it impossible for her to accept the help.

The Bar seemed like the perfect fit for her. She handled the books, the drinks, the management. She stole from the tip jar from time to time, but he didn’t mind since she does all the work while Tony sat around planning events with his husband. 

“So what?” Nat said, her face screwed up as she tried to reach the bottom of a mug with her sponge.

“ _Eh_ ,”

“Eh, what? Eh, bad? You look like shit,”

Tony didn’t reply, so she took it upon herself to push more.

“Steve?” she asked. She frowned as soon as the name was out of her mouth, a confirmation from his _Whatcha gonna do about it?_ Shrug.

She leaned close, both elbows on the bar, her hand propping her chin up on her palm. Even though Nat couldn’t stand his husband, she was always down to hear any and all drama relating to the Tony and Steve show. “What about him?” 

“Bad day. He woke up early just to avoid having to kiss me good morning,”

“Ah, don’t let him bother you,” Nat sighed, getting up from her slight lean to throw out the ash and discarded cigarette butts from the tray next to her beer. “Twinks are crazy,”

Tony grunted. He can practically hear his father voicing his unwanted opinion about gay men. “It’s our anniversary today. Five miserable years,” he lifted his glass, gesturing towards Nat and muttered, “Cheers,” before downing down the last of it.

“Wow,” Nat whistled, tilting her head as if trying to remember something. She’d been Steve’s best man, clad in a sheer purple dress that had a long slit up her thigh to show off the sparkly silver heels and supple pale smooth skin. There was so many pictures taken of her and Steve, you’d think she’d remember the anniversary of that date. “Jeez. Fuck. Dude, that was quick,” her picked up a peanut from the bowl next to the draft beers, cracking the shell between her ripped off gel nail polished fingers. “Is he going to do one of his infamous, uh,” she snapped her fingers as a cue for her line, “what do you call it? Not a scavenger hunt–”

“ _Treasure_ hunt,” he filled in.

His husband loved games. Mostly mind games which spilled into actual games. And there was nothing that Steve loved more than to set up the elaborate annual anniversary treasure hunts, each clue leading to the hiding place of the next clue until he reached the end and was finally rewarded with his gift. It was something he picked up from his parents, a childhood nostalgia for Sarah and Joseph Rogers’ anniversaries that really stuck with him. He would’ve found it amusing, but he didn’t grow up in Steve’s household, he grew up in the Stark household, and the last present he remembered his father giving his mother was a set of pearl earrings that he just left on her vanity, no gift wrapping or mention.

“Should we wager on how pissed he’s going to get at you this year?” Nat asked, smirking at him with those taunting eyes.

That was the problem with Steve’s treasure hunts: He never could figure out all the clues. Their first anniversary, back in New York, he went two for seven. That was his best year yet. The opening clue?

_This place is a bit of a hole in the wall,_

_But we had a great kiss here one Tuesday last fall._

Ever been in a spelling bee as a kid? That snowy second after the announcement of the word as you sift your brain to see if you can spell it? It was like that – the kind of blank panic that coursed through him at the mention of those clues. 

“An Irish bar in a not-so-Irish place,” Steve had nudged.

He remembered biting the side of his lip, starting to shrug, scanning their living room as if the answer was hidden in the layout. Steve breathed in harshly, plastering a fake smile on his face for another very long minute. 

“We were lost in the rain ...?” he said with an open gap for his husband to fill in, drumming his fingers against the back of the couch he was leaning on.

Tony shook his head.

“ _McMann’s,_ Tony. Remember? We got lost in the rain in Chinatown trying to find that dim sum place, and it was supposed to be near the statue of Confucius but it turns out there are two statues of Confucius, and we ended up at that random Irish bar all soaking wet, and we slammed a few whiskeys, and you kissed me, and it was–”

“Right!” he said, faking a revelation, “You should have done a clue with Confucius, I would have gotten that,” 

“The statue wasn’t the _point_. The place was the point. The moment. I just … thought it was special,” he said those last words with a disappointed childish lilt.

“It _was_ special,” He pulled him in and kissed him, chaste and long. “That smootch right there was my special anniversary reenactment. Let’s go do it again at McMann’s,”

At McMann’s, the bartender, a big, bearded bear-kid, saw them come in and grinned, poured them both whiskeys, and pushed over the next envelope with the clue inside.

_When I’m down and feeling blue,_

_There’s only one place that will do._  

That one turned out to be the Alice in Wonderland statue in Central Park, which Steve had told – he’d told him, he knew he’d told him many times – lightened his mood as a child. Something about learning lighting by sitting in front of it for hours and sketching out the ever changing light source off the bronze statue. Tony didn’t remember the conversations. His mind was constantly occupied with codes, blueprints, and ideas that he didn’t have enough space to remember what Steve did as a kid or what color combinations Tony wanted for his forty-fifth birthday.

By the time they reached the end of the day, to exchanging their presents – the traditional paper presents for the first year of marriage – Steve only spoke in clipped, one worded answers.

“I love you, Steve. You know I love you,” he said, moving closer to him from their seats inside the limo. Steve’s arms were folded over his chest, staring out at the laser-eyed joggers and scissor-legged skaters, tight-lipped and pouting. Tony tapped his shoulder with two fingers, trying to bite down the anger when Steve shrugged him off. “Steve, I don’t get why you need me to prove my love to you by remembering the exact same things you do, the exact same way you do. It doesn’t mean I don’t love our life together,”

He tried again to get Steve to face him, reaching for his hand, only to be rewarded with Steve slipping it out of his fingers. He’s never forget: Steve always going overboard, him never, ever being worthy of the effort. 

Happy anniversary, asshole.

“I’m guessing – five years – he’s going to get _really_ pissed,” Nat continued. “So I hope you got him a really good gift,”

“On my to-do list,” 

“What’s the theme for five years? Paper?”

“Paper is the first year,” he said. At the end of Year One’s unexpectedly wrenching treasure hunt, Steve presented him with a set of posh stationery, Stark Industries embossed at the top, the paper so creamy he expected his fingers to come away moist. In return, he’d presented his husband with a pack of thick notebook with the acceptance letter for NYU for him to be enrolled in the fall semester for business management. Steve stared him down when Tony explained that now he could get a _real_ degree. Neither of them liked their presents. They both pretended like they’d use it, but never did. 

“Silver?” Natasha guessed, “Bronze? Aluminum? Bubblegum? Help me out, I’m floundering,”

“ _Wood,_ ” Tony supplied, “There’s no romantic presents for wood,”

At the end of the bar, Angie neatly folded her magazine, unfolded her legs, and left everything but her Marc Jacobs purse on the bar and a wrinkled five dollar bill. They all exchanged tight-lipped, fake smiles as she walked out.

“I got it!” Nat cheered, “Go home, fuck his brains out, then smack him with your dick and scream, ‘ _There’s some wood for you, bitch!_ ’,”

They laughed as Nat started to pantomime dick-slapping his husband.

No, Steve and Nat were never going to be friends. They pretended like they could stomach the sight of the other, both far too territorial. Nat was used to being the alpha woman every time she walked into a room, Steve was use to defying every authoritative personality. The first time Tony introduced Nat to his new boyfriend, he remembered the redhead clenching her jaw every time the younger man opened his mouth. He understood. He couldn’t stand when Steve talked about things that should only really be a hobby, rather than a career. 

Before Steve and Tony got serious, got engaged, got married, he would get glimpses of Nat’s thoughts in a sentence here or there. _It’s funny, I can’t quite get a read on him, like who he really is._ And, _You just seem kind of not yourself with him._ And, _There’s a difference between really loving someone and loving the idea of him._ And finally, _The important thing is he makes you happy._

Needless to say, for two people who lived in the same city – the same city twice: first New York, now California – they barely even knew each other. They flitted in and out of his life like well-timed stage actors, one going out the door as the other came in, and on the rare occasions when they both inhabited the same room, they seemed somewhat bemused at the situation.

Back when Steve really made him happy.

Steve offered his own notions of Nat: _She’s very … California, huh?_ And, _You just have to be in the right mood for her._ And, _She’s a little needy about you. But I guess she doesn’t have anyone else._

Tony hoped when they all wounded back in California, the two would let it drop – agree to disagree, free to be you and me. Neither did. Nat was funnier than Steve, though, so it was a mismatched battle. Steve was clever, stubborn, sarcastic. Steve could get him riled up, could make an excellent, barbed point, but Nat always made him laugh. It was dangerous the amount of time he laughed _at_ his husband, and not _with_ him.

“Nat, I thought we agreed you’d never mention my genitalia again after the Christmas party of ‘08,” he said. “That within the bounds of our friendship, I have no genitalia,”

The phone rang. Nat hummed, going to answer, but decided to finish the last of her beer before answering it. She was on the line for maybe ten seconds before she rolled her eyes and smiled. “He sure _is_ here, one moment, please!” Nat covered the bottom of the olive green phone – a novelty dial phone their only source of communication from The Bar to the outside world – and mouthed: ‘Dottie.”

Dorothy “Dottie” Underwood lived across the street from him and Steve. Retired three years. Divorced for eight. She moved into the development years ago, when she first got married in the sixties as a young woman with her husband. Tony sensed that after spending four decades as a housewife for a rich lawyer, being divorced left her with way too much time on her hands. She acquired the house in the divorce, getting to live her days near the beach and surrounded by the luxuries of the one percent. Jarvis once told him he saw her children visit a few times – two girls and a boy – ushering their children into the old mid-century mansion as they slathered on weary smiles and fidgeted with their cashmere cardigans. The last time he recalled them coming, it was Thanksgiving and the sight of Dottie cooing in rapid fire Russian to her grandchildren made his heart grow fonder. She took a quick liking to Nat since the first time she came in with loose gray curls and pristine white gloves, asking her in a thick accent if the younger woman had seen her alcoholic ex-husband. Apparently, he called her in a drunken stupor asking for a ride back to his smaller home in Newport, and Dottie never could say no to her first love. Ever since then, she always found a reason to call. _Your mailbox looks awfully full today, Anthony, maybe a package came._ Or: _It’s suppose to rain, you might want to close your windows._ The reasons were bogus. Dottie just needed to hear something else other than her own thoughts.

Tony waved the phone over, smiling into the phone as he answered.

“Hello, Anthony,” Dottie’s unique voice came over, “Sorry to bother you. I just thought you’d like to know … your front door is wide open, and that cat of yours in outside. It’s an indoor cat, isn’t it?” 

Tony pinched his eyebrows, grunting a reply.

“I tried calling Jarvis, but it seems like there’s no one inside,” she said, her voice picking up a concerned twinge at the end.

“Don’t worry,” Tony said, “It’s about time I head back home anyway,”

It was a fifteen minute drive from The Bar. Most of the time spent trekking up the hill towards the most lavish homes of celebrities and wealthy individuals. They towered over each other in different aesthetics, all competing with people they’ve never met before for the bigger and better house. The old money stick to traditional, colonial, mid-century homes, the nouveau riche constructing sharp, white homes that rival the ones from futuristic cartoons. When Steve and Tony moved in, their only neighbors descended on them with plastic smiles. One middle-aged mother of three, bringing a bottle of expensive champagne that must’ve come from their own cellar. She told them she was an _Influencer,_ selling soaps and soap products from her garage while her husband spent his days down at the many plastic surgeon offices, slicing and tucking into rich people. She recommended her Instagram, then berated Steve into making her a logo for free. He eventually agreed, which made her smile so wide her wrinkles were even more prominent. “So just the two of you? In this whole big house?” she asked, taking a sip of the champagne the married couple felt obligated to share.

“Just the two of us,” Tony confirmed, omitting his butler.

“Seems lonely,”

She was right.

Quiet. The street was always quiet. That’s a sign of a good neighborhood: when you could jog without fear of someone lurking in the shadows of the three floor homes. Though that day, it sounded extra quiet. No children out playing on the lawns, the clicks of dog paws on the sidewalk, nothing. As he neared his home, conscious of the noise of the car engine, Tony could see the orange tabby cat lazily moving through the rose bushes. Still in the walkway, twenty minutes after Dottie’s call. It was strange. Steve loved that cat, having him chipped and fat, never letting him outside. He thought it was absolutely hilarious naming the thing Goose, chuckling under his breath. It was a smart cat, but could be a great hide-and-seeker. Steve knew that despite the LoJack imbedded in his soft furry rolls, he’d never see that cat again if he ever got out. His nightmares were plagued with the cat walking out and getting swept up by the ocean, drifting straight into the maw of a hungry shark.

But it turned out the cat knew it’s place. Goose saw him coming, meowing lazily at him as he sat down, staring him down similarly to how Steve would stare Tony down. As Tony pulled in to the drive, Dottie came out and stood on her porch, and he could feel the eyes of the old woman and cat on him as he picked Goose up.

He was about to thrust his key into the lock when he saw that the front door was wide open. Dottie said that it was on the phone, but seeing it for himself made shivers run down his back. It wasn’t a taking-out-the-trash-be-back-in-a-moment. It was wide open, creaking on it’s hinges, daring you to enter.

Dottie hovered from her spot on her property, holding her shawl close to her chest in the salty wind. He frowned, setting Goose down in the entrance and started going up the stairs, two at a time. He called his husband’s name.

Silence.

“Steve, you home?” 

He ran straight upstairs. No Steve. The ironing board was set up, the iron still on, a white button down waiting to be pressed. 

“Steve!”

As he ran back downstairs, Tony could see Dottie still framed in the open doorway, leaning to and fro for a better view. He swerved into the living room, and pulled up short. The five thousand dollar rug his mother adored was glistening in the sun from the floor to ceiling windows, shards of glass peppering the grey, the coffee table shattered. End tables were on their sides, books spilled on the floor like a stack of cards. Even the heavy antique ottoman was belly-up, doing it’s best impression of a dead cockroach. In the middle of the mess was a pair of good sharp scissors.

“Steve!”

He began running, screaming his name. Though the kitchen, where a kettle was burning, down to the basement, where the wine cellar stood empty, and then out the back door to the sea. He pounded across the slender wooden steps towards the private beach, peering over the clashing waves to see if he was painting the scenery, where he found him once, paint shiny in the sun and canvas wet with oil. He looked at him back then, and said nothing, turning back to the painting. Now, there was not even a soul on the beach. Tony screamed his name into the wind, fear gripping him tightly.

“ _Steve!_ ”

He wasn’t on the water, he wasn’t in the house. Steve was not there.

Steve was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> Special thank you to Avery, my beta and fellow crackhead for helping me develop this fic and also getting my ass to watch the movie. 
> 
> Now, for some tidbits:
> 
> 1\. If you've read the book, you've noticed some similarities. I've chosen to lift almost all the journal entries and The Bar sections from the book, almost word for word. I hate to do it, but Gillian Flynn is a true GENIUS and I can't replicate her subtle hints on my own. I did change things around to better suit my own AU, so it's not a complete copy. 
> 
> 2\. Chiaroscuro is an art term in Italian meaning "blending". Seeing how Steve and I are both Art History majors, I thought it would be interesting to include that into the fic. The same goes for the chapter title, 'peintre maudit', is in reference to Caravaggio and his personal life, an artist who will be referenced a lot in this fic along with other artists from the Renaissance and Mannerist movements.
> 
> 3\. This fic isn't Tony Stark friendly. I personally have nothing against him in the comics or the fandom interpretation, but I do really not like him in the MCU nor his actor. This won't end well for him, so if you love him, I suggest you don't read past this point. He is a bad person in this fic. 
> 
> 4\. Follow me on Tumblr @cptnleaf for updates and moodboards relating to the fic. Don't forget to give my bestie a follow @heterophobemarvel. Thanks for reading!


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